SACHI at CHI 2018 in Montreal next week

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. CHI has been held annually since 1982 and attracts thousands of international attendees. Next week members of SACHI will be at the CHI 2018 conference in Montreal where they will be presenting 6 full papers (1 best paper), 1 demonstration, 1 late-breaking work and other activities.

This work includes pointing all around you, the design of visualization tools, physicalization, change blindness, multi-user interfaces, tangible interaction and augmented reality.

You can find the research papers, videos and more details on SACHI @ CHI2018 here.

Old French Bible Project

A project funded by the Undergraduate Research Assistant Scheme has successfully completed the first stage of interdisciplinary work, between the Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the School of Computer Science. The long-term aim is to digitise and analyse early French bibles.

In this pilot project, undergraduate student Gregor Haywood, under the supervision of Prof. Clive Sneddon and Dr. Mark-Jan Nederhof, explored the feasibility of large-scale OCR technology for early printed text. Scans from a French bible from 1543 were provided by the Special Collections of the University Library. Much of the project consisted of iterations of automatic transcription, manual correction, retraining, and evaluation of accuracy. In addition, problems were investigated that specifically arise from taking OCR technology designed for modern printed documents and applying it on early documents. Such problems include non-standard character sets, non-standard page layout, faded or smudged ink, and torn pages.

Despite of these problems, it was demonstrated that error rates below 3% are achievable, which paves the way for a continuation of these efforts.

Funding success for characterizing the adoption of ORCID ID in academic communities

Alex Voss from the School of Computer Science and Anna Clements and Eva Borger from the University Library have been awarded funding by OCLC for a 1-year project titled “Characterizing the adoption of ORCID ID in academic communities”.

ORCID iDs are persistent digital identifiers that distinguish researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, support automated linkages between individuals and their professional activities ensuring that their work is recognized and attributed.

The funded project, which began in March, expands on a pilot study carried out in 2017 by Eva as part of her MSc dissertation project, which investigated the adoption and use of ORCID iDs among researchers at the University of St Andrews and identified key use cases and new avenues for advocacy.

The team now aim to carry out similar surveys at other institutions that integrate ORCID iDs and build a bigger picture of how advocacy, institutional processes and mandates relate to the adoption of ORCID iDs in academic communities. Based on these findings, they plan to formulate recommendations on how advocacy and policies regarding ORCID iDs can be employed to maximise their value in the research process.

Alex Voss has a related MSc dissertation, Consolidating Output and Citations Data, for students interested in this particular project or research area.

If you would like to find out more about ORCID iDs at the University of St Andrews, visit their ORCID pages. For more information about the project, please contact Alex Voss at alex.voss@st-andrews.ac.uk or visit the ORCID study blog for ongoing updates.

St Andrews – University of Primorska co-tutelle in Computer Science

The University of St Andrews and Primorska are soon to agree to award a joint degree with the title of Doctor of Philosophy (on condition that the joint PhD study programme in Computer Science will gain accreditation of the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education). This represents the culmination of many months of effort from Drs Matjaž Kljun, Klen Čopič Pucihar and Professor Aaron Quigley. Aaron and Matjaž first met at the UMAP conference in 2011 in Spain as mentor and mentee in the PhD doctoral program. Since then, Matjaž and Klen who undertook their PhDs in the University of Lancaster have returned to Slovenia to establish and exciting program of HCI research and development in the HICUP lab. In 2017 a program of international support (Slovenian/English) allowed them to invite Aaron to Slovenia for three weeks and this has resulted in a number of join grant submissions and the establishment of this co-tutelle program. We look forward to many years collaborating and we look forward to this new PhD student starting later this year.

VISSOFT 2018 Keynote by Professor Aaron Quigley

Aaron will be a keynote speaker at the IEEE VISSOFT 2018 conference later this year. “The sixth IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2018) builds upon the success of the previous four editions of VISSOFT, which in turn followed after six editions of the IEEE International Workshop on Visualizing Software for Understanding and Analysis (VISSOFT) and five editions of the ACM Symposium on Software Visualization (SOFTVIS). Software visualization is a broad research area encompassing concepts, methods, tools, and techniques that assist in a range of software engineering and software development activities. Covered aspects include the development and evaluation of approaches for visually analyzing software and software systems, including their structure, execution behaviour, and evolution.”

Mensch-und-Computer 2019 Keynote by Professor Aaron Quigley

Professor Aaron Quigley will be a keynote speaker at the Mensch-und-Computer conference 2019 in Hamburg Germany in September of 2019. This series of symposia takes place each year in different German-speaking countries. This is one of the largest HCI conferences in Europe each year with over 700 delegates from industry and academia. Usability Professionals and Scientists come together in a multi-track program with long papers, short contributions, demos, tutorials and workshops. Submissions are possible in German and English.

Adriana Wilde (St Andrews): Rising to challenges in assessment, feedback and encouraging gender diversity in computing (School Seminar)

Abstract

This talk is in two parts, in the first of which Adriana will focus on her experiences in assessment and feedback in large classes, and in the second part on her work in encouraging gender diversity in computer science.

The focus of the first part will be on her involvement in redesigning an undergraduate module on HCI, where the methods of assessment used were no suitable for increasingly larger classes (up to 160 students). Redesign decisions needed to preserve the validity and reliability of the assessment whilst respecting the need for timely feedback. Adriana will specifically talk about the exam and coursework, and how learning activities in the module were aligned to the assessment, through the use of PeerWise for student-authored MCQs, and the use of video for assessment to foster creativity and application of knowledge. During the talk, there will be an opportunity for discussion on the challenges then encountered.

A (shorter) second part of the talk will present her experiences in supporting women in computing, starting with a very small-scale intervention with staff and students at her previous institution, and concluding with her engagement at the Early Career Women’s Network in St Andrews.

Event details

When: 23rd January 2018 14:00 - 15:00
Where: Cole 1.33a
Series: School Seminar Series
Format: Seminar

PhD viva success: Adam Barwell

Congratulations to Adam Barwell, who successfully defended his thesis yesterday. Adam’s thesis was supervised by Professor Kevin Hammond. He is pictured with second supervisor Dr Christopher Brown, Internal examiner Dr Susmit Sarkar and external examiner Professor Susan Eisenbach from Imperial College, London.

iVoLVER receives Best Demo Jury Award at ACM ISS

The iVoLVER system, created by Gonzalo Méndez and Miguel Nacenta from the SACHI group at the School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, received Best Demo Jury Award at the ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ACM ISS) conference last week.

ACM ISS 2017, took place in Brighton, UK and selects a different location each year, with Tokyo, Japan selected as next year’s destination. The conference is a premier venue for research that studies how people interact in smart spaces and surfaces and how to design and engineer solutions for novel interfaces.

iVoLVER is a web-based visual programming environment that enables anyone to transform visualizations that they find in-the-wild (e.g., in a poster or a newspaper) into new visualizations that are more useful for them. Congratulations to the iVoLVER team. You can try out the open source iVoLVER prototype using a browser.

An example iVoLVER interface

Best Demo Jury Award

Ott: Effective Tool Support for the Working Semanticist

ACM SIGPLAN has judged Ott: Effective Tool Support for the Working Semanticist, by Peter Sewell, Francesco Zappa Nardelli, Scott Owens, Gilles Peskine, Thomas Ridge, Susmit Sarkar, and Rok Strniša, to be the recipient of the Most Influential ICFP Paper Award for 2017. From the citation:

“Over the past ten years, ICFP researchers have benefitted tremendously from the open-source tool and the effective design space exploration that it promotes.”

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